Fresh Cut Grass
Remus walked rather blindly along the corridor, wanting to be away from Sirius, wanting not to bother him. He knew where Sirius would probably go, the Room of Requirement. Sirius, and sometimes James, went there when they didn’t want to be overheard. Oversmelled. Whatever. Remus didn’t want to make them uncomfortable, so he pretended he didn’t know. He didn’t ask what kind of feelings they wanted to hide from him. Maybe they were disgusted with him? Maybe they didn’t want to be his friend, but felt that they had to? He didn’t think so, that would be quite contrary to the absolute joy he smelled from them – springtime, flowers, fresh cut grass – when they pranked with him, or ran with him on the full moons. Whatever they had to keep to themselves, it didn’t matter. And if his awareness of them and their scents only increased the longer he lived with them, he didn’t need to worry them by telling them – he didn’t want them to be more uncomfortable with their unconventional roommate than they already were.
It didn’t help that the first time he smelled Sirius be so scared – sour, bad milk, skunk – it was so overwhelming to him that he actually threw up. It had been close to a full moon, and he wasn’t used to living in such close quarters, anyway, and Sirius’ fear had been insistent and somewhat terrifying. He knew that smell, or the close enough equivalent in others, from his parents, when he was in the hospital, or other patients. It wasn’t a good smell. Remus only meant to get out of bed and comfort Sirius, but instead, he had to go straight for the toilet – and good thing he hadn’t hesitated. When Sirius came to comfort him, instead, Remus was very embarrassed, and let slip about smell – he felt terrible, but he was confused how Sirius’ fear had all but gone away, replaced with something caring, like fresh laundry. It wasn’t until later that he saw Sirius’ mom-overdrive in action, and found the pattern of nasty letters and sour milk, that he understood.
Remus thought he knew one of the reasons that James went, as he saw it increase with the increase of Lily’s attentions. He knew long before James did that Lily would accept, and not just because he and Lily were friends (they became friends when Remus asked – no, begged – her help on his potions work, the one subject he was actually dreadful at). He knew because of her reactions. The ones she couldn’t hide.
He didn’t tell her about it. Maybe he should have, maybe it was too much of an invasion of privacy to notice that she started smelling strongly of citrus whenever James was around, especially when he looked windswept and not at all bad just coming from a Quidditch game, but not as good as Sirius, don’t think about that, don’t think about that, as well as once when they were studying in the library and she was lost in thought and she was looking absently at a picture of a popular wizard singer – well. It didn’t take too much to figure out what that smell meant. And after around their third year, if James occasionally smelled kind of like like citrus as well, maybe grapefruit instead of oranges, when Lily was around, and then sometimes had that same scent before he skipped off to the room of requirement, he didn’t mention it. Maybe he should have, if only just to tell James that he could stay in the comfort of his own bed if he just used a silencing charm, that he didn’t really mind too much, and citrus wasn’t his favorite smell but it wasn’t bad, but that conversation would have made Remus just about die from embarrassment.
Peter didn’t feel the need to use the room of requirement at all, but he also didn’t smell any lust on him, not even when a rather nice looking Hufflepuff had asked him to go to Hogsmeade with her. All he smelled was discomfort and embarrassment – moldy biscuits. And her disappointment – mold, and frost.
Sirius used the room for more than just lust, if he used it for that at all – how would that smell? Sirius’ lust? I bet it would be delicious – no, don’t think about that, idiot – because he also used it whenever he got a letter from his parents, or whenever whatever he was feeling was overwhelming. He didn’t want to comment, but sometimes he felt like an over-cared for invalid; he wasn’t going to throw up at every strong smell. Maybe it was good for Sirius, though, to take a break instead of flying off the handle and bouncing around the common room in destructive joy, but Remus wanted to capture Sirius’ happiness and stick his nose in it. Green grass, fresh cut. His favorite variation.
Except for this. His new favorite smell. One that he didn’t want to never smell again. How would he make Sirius feel this again if he didn’t even know what it was? Maybe it was a variation on annoyance – he didn’t always think puns were funny, except that was a lie, Sirius thought Remus’ puns were great, he could smell his amusement – cinnamon. Another of his favorite smells. He made jokes as much as he could, so that couldn’t have been it. What else had been happening? Remus had to stop, and shake himself, shake his head – whatever the smell had been, Sirius obviously didn’t want him to know about it. He should stop. He shouldn’t try to stretch in front of Sirius again. That would be a bad idea. Very bad. Don’t do it.
He was going to do it.
By the time he got to transfiguration, his friends were already all there. He slid into his usual spot by Sirius and could smell – well, couldn’t, he could not-smell – that Sirius had, indeed, been to the Room of Requirement and showered with whatever soap that was there that got rid of all scents. Without that lack of smell, he wouldn’t have been able to tell; he was wearing the same clothes, and he had even charmed his hair dry. It was almost a disappointment, but at least the soap didn’t get rid of Sirius’ base smell, the one that made him uniquely him. Remus breathed him in, hoping he was being discrete, before remembering that now would be an especially bad time for Sirius to think he was trying to smell him. Oh well.
“All right, Moony?” Sirius asked, not quite looking at him. The normal. Since when had that been normal? Remus didn’t quite know, just that sometimes after he was gone and came back like this, he didn’t quite look him in the eye. That was alright, but he wanted Sirius to look at him so that he could stretch and see if he could get that scent again. At least he hadn’t noticed him smell him.
“I’m great, Pads”, said Remus, pulling him into a sort of one-armed hug. It was the least he could do, a little I’m sorry, even if Sirius didn’t know it.
McGonagall started the lesson, and his opportunity was gone, for a while. Unless. Remus was a good student, notoriously the best student in the marauders, where brains were respected but paying attention in class was optional. Unless I get him to feel… whatever that was… in class? Remus didn’t know if he was going off the deep end or what, but even McGonagall’s stunning example of how to enchant a self-vanishing wastepaper basket wasn’t enough to keep his mind off of the boy next to him. Even Sirius probably wouldn’t run off in the middle of class, would he? And maybe if Remus pretended he didn’t notice it, whatever it was, he would be more comfortable, right? This was right on the edge of Remus’ limits of morality, but he didn’t quite care anymore.
Remus pulled out a handkerchief and pretended to blow his nose. Not that a runny nose would stop him from smelling Sirius, who he was so attuned to, at this point, but who needed to know that? And then, with Sirius’s half glance at him of concern, he stretched again. Immediately, he felt like an idiot. Why would him stretching make Sirius feel anything? He was obviously an idiot, why would Sirius feel the same way he did when he saw Sirius stretch, in the morning in their dormitory, so lazily beautiful that it made Remus feel like he had been punched in the stomach. He couldn’t even figure out quite what that feeling was, or rather, he didn’t want to stop and examine it, so why should Sirius feel anything of the sort?
Remus was about six feet deep with his own embarrassment and hastily trying not to think about Sirius in the morning, with his rough voice and sleepy eyes, no, don’t think about that, that it took him a second to notice that the scent was back. That scent. Sirius’ scent, of sharp crisp apples and spice, and oh fuck I miscalculated, I forgot how much I want to taste this, and it took nearly all of Remus’ willpower to not look at Sirius, to not react at all, to make a small note on the diagram he was drawing about perpetually vanishing objects, and not to smile or drool. Damn.